[chbot] Bitcoin etc.

[Andy ZL3AG]

It rates as an EPIC FAIL as far as energy consumption (and probable additional carbon emissions) is concerned.

On 2/07/2018, at 8:14 AM, Mark Atherton wrote:

> Just discovered this http://www.nybooks.com/articles/2018/01/18/bitcoin-mania/
> 
> "By the end of 2016, a single mining facility in China was using over half the estimated power used by all of Google’s data centres worldwide at the time"
> 
> "estimates that it costs his company around $400 in electricity alone to mine each bitcoin. That’s because bitcoin mining is not only computationally intensive, it is energy-intensive. By one estimate, the power consumption of bitcoin mining now exceeds that of Ireland and is growing so exponentially that it will surpass that of the entire United States by July 2019"
> 
> Please, somebody shoot these numbers down, this is completely nuts...
> 
> - Mark