Well, improved energy efficiency just means more hashes/s and the difficulty adjusting. There's nothing to be gained in terms of the security or efficiency of the network as a whole by making the hardware faster, it's only good for whoever makes and uses that hardware.

I'm not sure what data you looking at but we went from 8300 J/TH in 2014 to 33.4 J/TH in 2023. So... what are you talking about?

Bitcoin cares not for how much energy it uses, just how valuable the energy it uses is. This does not make more energy available to anyone else or reduce the price.

My first link shows that Bitcoin consumes roughly 40GW and my second link shows that the UK roughly does too.

There are a lot of ifs and buts here ... but the amount of power used to support the BT mechanism worldwide is roughly the same as the power consumption of the entirety of the UK.

Because every unit of electricity causes climate change and burns resources (even renewable sources of electricity - they just burn them slower). From a societal point of view we are dumping huge amounts of electricity and resources into a hole to accomplish nothing that couldn’t be accomplished with a database and a trusted third party at a billionth of the cost (or less).

The vast majority of transactions are speculation on what other people might pay for a bitcoin (i.e., a line on a spreadsheet). And even then, that speculation and trading often occurs on secondary markets which rely on trusted third parties - thus rendering the entire ordeal even more pointless.

Unless your intent isn't making the world a better place in some sort of meaningful way, learn about things and find something to care about that you can affect that actually matters. Bitcoin or AI or whatever is not worth your time. Do something real.

If we ever get to the point where bitcoin or what people are doing on servers is the most pressing problem in the world worthy of our outrage, I will cheer you on.

"Anon yells at cloud" isn't worth anyone's effort or time.

Wait till you find out how much fossil fuel energy the US burns via its military to defend the dollar.

Burning firewood actually immediately releases an extensive set of carcinogens, also causing depression.

I find extremely funny that I came across this spammy comment while sitting on a vulnerability in their code because my attempts of contacting them have been unsuccessful

Everything is orders of magnitude more efficient than bitcoin.

Databases either?

> We can't know how much power AI uses.

I call shenanigans on this statement. We can and most certainly can tell how much power AI is using. The upper bound is the total datacenter usage.

BTC enthusiasts have very creative arguments for why their currency isn’t the a complete disaster for the climate. Like pointing fingers.

> gas that's normally burned off at the well site

Funny thing about that. Civilized governments put a stop to that, by fining flare-offs to make it economical to not do that.

> What this site does not show is how much of the power used to maintain the network is waste power such as gas that's normally burned off at the well site or hydro electric that goes to waste.

WTF? Hydro is rarely wasted because it's so dispatchable. Typically, it can only happen during high water seasons. Same for the gas power plants.

> Unlike AI, there's a strong incentive to find the cheapest electricity possible.

Like coal.

And what does sucking up all that low cost electricity to waste on a frivolity do to the price of electricity in general?

Cmon you remember supply and demand right