[Cryptography] One Bitcoin Transaction Now Uses as Much Energy as Your House in a Week

[Christian Huitema]

On 11/9/2017 12:32 PM, Florian Weimer wrote:

> (And I'm not talking about a 20% advantage or something like that,
> which is well within margin of local prices for electricity.)
There are periods at which the wholesale price of electricity is
negative: https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=6730. So,
imagine that you are the operator of a nuclear plant that cannot be shut
down, or of a wind farm that is just getting wind when the market is
saturated. You have free electricity, in fact negative price
electricity. It makes perfect sense to send that to a Bitcoin mining rig.

-- Christian Huitema