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.

Unlike AI, there's a strong incentive to find the cheapest electricity possible. Because that's what everyone else is doing. With Bitcoin, you now exactly what your costs are and what your yields are. There's a clear threshold, when power in an area becomes too expensive there's no reason left to mine.

AI, on the other hand, is a bet on the future - infinite gains. No matter how much power costs, it's worth it to keep using as much as possible. We can't know how much power AI uses. Unlike Bitcoin, there aren't any metrics from which to extrapolate. But we do know that AI uses more power than Bitcoin already. We just have no idea how much more.

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bb88 10 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> 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.

	▲	utopiah 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Out of curiosity, do you have an estimate on that?

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oofbey 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

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

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fragmede 11 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> 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.

	▲	nativeit 5 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		Did they require the methane be captured? I thought flare-offs were done because the methane gas is something like 1000x worse than the CO2.
	▲	krupan 8 hours ago \| parent \| prev \| next [-]
		I hadn't heard of this. Do they just allow the gas to go into the atmosphere instead? I've always heard that's worse than burning it
	▲	zoklet-enjoyer 10 hours ago \| parent \| prev \| next [-]
		They still do it in North Dakota
	▲	UltraSane 6 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		flare-offs are much better than releasing raw methane into the atmosphere because methane is a much worse greenhouse gas than CO2

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johnnienaked 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

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

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cyberax 10 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

> 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.

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beenBoutIT 8 hours ago | parent [-]

An interesting point is that any nation state or corporation can focus resources on either AI or BTC, but not both at the same time. BTC is a sure bet in the long run while AI is potentially capable of delivering a faster ROI with no hard guarantees. As BTC FOMO hits every country on Earth it's likely that AI will take a 100+ year backseat to massive state sponsored BTC operations. It's not hard to imagine a situation where governments restrict AI HW manufacture and limit electricity for AI as a means of supporting the national BTC effort.

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UltraSane 6 hours ago | parent [-]

"BTC is a sure bet in the long run "

7 transactions per second is NOT a sure bet.

	▲	childintime 4 hours ago \| parent [-]
		And don't discount the negative sentiment around bitcoin as the nest of types that deserve to be completely wrecked financially, because they add no value to society, as in a Ponzi scheme. It seems inevitable to me this scheme is going to end some day and nobody is going to give a damn. It'll be the "Good Riddance Coin", filled with negative sentiment.