Ethereum would have consumed 0.2% of global electricity this year
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At the time of the merge, the most economically productive use for graphics cards was to mine Ethereum. The merge caused a worldwide crash in graphics cards prices. GPT 3.5 launched two months later.
If Ethereum had not merged and instead stayed on proof-of-work, it would have consumed 0.2% of global electricity over the past 365 days.
The merge was completed with zero network downtime, like swapping the engine of an aircraft mid-flight.