Let's face it, Crypto is a fancy complicated ponzi scheme with a lot of buzz words. And to compare energy being used by humans to benefit the things they do vs energy being wasted to stand up monopoly money is disingenuous at best. Let's hope all the computers running Crypto on China get shut down, the sooner the better.
So let me get this straight:
Mining = "energy being wasted to stand up monopoly money"
Empty buildings with lights on = "energy being used by humans to benefit the things they do"
Disingenuous:
not candid or sincere, typically by pretending that one knows less about something than one really does. As in, ignoring all the other waste to point the finger of shame at miners.
I'm not trying to say crypto mining is good, but it's a very skewed perspective to suggest it's the "worst waste of energy in human history" while turning a blind eye to pretty much every other waste of energy out there.
I'm saying that we, as humans, waste a TON of power, every single day. I suggested above that we probably waste at least half of all power consumed in the world in various ways. I'd actually say if we really wanted to, we could probalby cut global power use to about 25% of what it currently is -- I have no hard data to back that up, it's just a guesstimate based on my own power use. Like, I don't need TV, I don't need several PCs running at all hours, I don't need lights on in rooms that are empty, I don't need 72F house temperatures year round (they're just nice), etc. I could cut my monthly power costs to around $65 while still having a refrigerator, modest heating/cooling, lights, and the PC I'm actually using. That's less than a fourth of my normal power use.
Anyway, crypto mining is a chunk of the global power use, but it's currently something like 122 TWh for Bitcoin, let's call it 200 TWh for all cryptocurrencies. According to
this page, global energy consumption is 113,009 TWh per year in 2017 -- that means crypto mining is 0.2% of the total global power consumed. Not only electricity, but all power, so the percentage is higher if you want to limit it to just electricity. (Somewhere around 25,000 TWh of electricity is used worldwide it seems, so crypto is nearly 1% of that.)
But again, considering all the ways we waste power as humans -- near-empty trains, buses, planes, cars, buildings, etc. are all great examples -- I think attacking those problems would be of more benefit than throwing up crypto mining as a red herring. There was an advertisement I saw once about "vampire power use" -- all those unused cell phone chargers and such left plugged in 24/7. If everyone in the world never left an unused power adapter sitting there sucking 0.2W of power, the global savings would be measurable! But if everyone in the world simply did a better job turning off lights when they're not needed (I tell my kids to do this ALL THE TIME!), we'd likely save 100 times as much power. Because a single light uses 10W for an LED, give or take, so that's the same as 50 vampire cell phone chargers -- and most light switches control anywhere from three to ten lights. Which means people focusing on vampire power use are distracted from the bigger issue.
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