Tackling the Energy Argument
Hello!
I Know but hear me out! So I had some free time and found some figures, thought I could share with you people so you can hopefully pick out my errors or have a discussion and tell me if I did anything wrong… Also not sure if this has been posted here but I did the work myself so not sure how great it is. Also some of these figures are from 2018 so not sure how well they work today though…
Gold mined = 200k tonnes/year divided by 365 = 548/day
energy cost = 90k KJ/gram of gold
1 million grams in a tonne
548 million grams/day mined of gold
90k KJ x 548,000,000 = 49,320,000,000,000 KJ/day used mining gold
Bitcoin mining uses ~138.4 million kWh / day
Gold mining uses ~13.7 billion kWh / day
Also gold chemical pollution isn't really here but tonnes of cyanide and mercury are used/produced from mining gold every day.
Conclusion mining Bitcoin uses ~100x less energy than mining gold and doesn't have as large of an effect on the environment. As 50% of mined gold is used for jewelry and ~20% is used for things that are necessary in everyday life and provides a benefit to society.
sources
https://www.gold.org/about-gold/gold-supply/gold-mining/how-much-gold
submitted by /u/eunit250
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