Quote from: em3rgentOrdr on April 13, 2013, 06:26:03 AM

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/04/12/what-bitcoin-teaches-us-about-the-internets-energy-use/

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Over at Bloomberg, Mark Gimein calls Bitcoin yes, Bitcoin an environmental disaster. Why? Because all that processing power used to mine for new Bitcoins requires a staggering amount of energy:

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Mining is a process in which powerful computers create Bitcoins by solving processor-intensive equations.
Blockchain.info, a site that tracks data on Bitcoin mining, estimates that in just the last 24 hours, miners used about $147,000 of electricity just to run their hardware, assuming an average price of 15 cents per kilowatt hour Thats enough to power roughly 31,000 U.S. homes, or about half a Large Hadron Collider.

Its a stunning stat, but does this really count as a disaster? Thats less clear. After all, we need to consider the counterfactural: Is it possible that these computers would be used for other activities and calculations anyway, if they werent mining Bitcoins?

Later makes the point that it is really wireless and 4G networks that consume the bulk of energy costs, not datacenters or bitcoin, citing: http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/04/cell-networks-are-energy-hogs/274961/

Thirty-one thousand homes?... Hmmn... "Right now, wind farms in Canada have a capacity of 6,500 MW enough to power over 2 million homes" http://www.canwea.ca/farms/index_e.php

The demonize BTC FUD machine seems really desperate even at this early stage of the game.