HACKER Q&A
📣 forgotmypw17

Which wastes more power, Bitcoin mining or inefficient JavaScript libs?


Which wastes more power, Bitcoin mining or inefficient JavaScript libs?


  👤 nabaraz Accepted Answer ✓
The answer is Bitcoin and it's not even close even when compared to all internet capable devices in the world.

Here is a napkin math-

Bitcoin mining consumes around 91 TWH of electricity each year. [1]

There are 20B internet capable devices out there. Let's assume a conservative estimate of 2 KWh/day (taken from my computer which is on almost 24/7) for a device.

2x20x365 = 14TWH

Bitcoin consumes 6.5x more electricity than all the internet capable devices in the world.

1. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/09/03/climate/bitco...