Nobody Knows How Much Energy Bitcoin Is Using (vice.com)

Posted by msmash on Wednesday May 16, 2018 @05:20AM from the closer-look dept.

dmoberhaus writes: A new report published in 'Joule' today claims Bitcoin may use up to 0.5% of the world's energy by the end of this year. We often hear about how bad Bitcoin is for the environment -- it already uses the same amount of energy as the country of Ireland -- but these numbers are usually just the /minimum/ amount of energy the network must be using. The actual amount of energy used by the Bitcoin network is likely substantially higher, but getting an accurate reading on that energy level is hard. The only researcher trying to quantify Bitcoin's energy use spoke to Motherboard about opening Bitcoin's 'black box.'

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But how much energy is used by traditional fiat? by NitroWolf · 2018-05-16 05:24 · Score: 0, Troll

So I get it, bitcoin is using massive amounts of energy to power it. But how much energy is used by other currencies? Both in the creation and the destruction of the currency? It costs a lot of money to maintain paper bills and coins. Keep them in circulation, etc... Then there is the processing cost of storing & transport of those physical goods. You need to factor those in to the cost analysis when comparing fiat to bitcoin, and not just say "bitcoin is using power lol!"
Yes, it uses power, but so do fiat currencies, and I'd wager they use about the same amount in their lifecycle as bitcoin does.