Ask HN: Which wastes more power, Bitcoin mining or inefficient JavaScript libs?

18 pointsforgotmypw172 comments

The answer is Bitcoin and it's not even close even when compared to all internet capable devices in the world.

Here is a napkin math-

Bitcoin mining consumes around 91 TWH of electricity each year. [1]

There are 20B internet capable devices out there. Let's assume a conservative estimate of 2 KWh/day (taken from my computer which is on almost 24/7) for a device.

2x20x365 = 14TWH

Bitcoin consumes 6.5x more electricity than all the internet capable devices in the world.

1. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/09/03/climate/bitco...

Not sure napkin math has the expressiveness to cover that topic.

Also: The question was centered around "wasting power", so we'd first have to define what we consider wasteful.

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