These wild and unreliable estimations they are reporting on, which have values that don't make much sense. Also, Arstechnica writers are morons and seriously misrepresent what they are writing on.

Remember where the world's crypto mining power usage was wildly 30 to 36 TWh in 2017? Bitcoin's value had just popped off, up to $20K USD. Now, about 6 years later, the value is double, but the Bitcoin mining reward halved in 2020. Mining equipment continued to get more efficient, and mining less profitable, but we are to believe the values, which expressly have no verifiable data backing them:

80 terawatthours (TWh) (lower bound), 170 TWh (estimate), and 390 TWh (upper bound).

That is one hell of a value spread, highlighting the huge uncertainty in their estimation!

That estimation was from Cambridge University's, the Chinese money controlled, weaponized propaganda study for hire psyop of a college. They base this on mostly guesses and secret data, they purport to get anonymized data from a few larger mining pools. Their verbiage on the topic are full of hints that they are biased and have little real understanding of how the Bitcoin system works.

(It reminds me of laughable studies, propagandized by government and politicians just a few years ago, put out by US universities. They'd go through all this trouble estimating electricity used, despite having no source of data to do so. It was am impressive data feat, but then they blew it by tagging on the lame propaganda at the end. They followed up by project a one-for-one increase in that electricity use, with increased adoption and transaction counts, to publish some scary future electricity usage....hilariously stupid. that's not how it works bud!)

The US EIA relied mostly on Cambridge's secret nonsense data. The EIA suggest they combined that with their own data, which doesn't seem able to complement each other. Yet, the EIA said two different things about their own data, throwing some question on their values highlighted in this article.

The EIA called their data method the "bottom-up" approach, by attempting to identify and determine the power usage of crypto mining companies in the US.

First, they stated:

We have identified a total of 137 facilities to date; the 52 facilities for which we have location and capacity data are represented in Figure 1. These sites are located in 21 states, with most in Texas, Georgia, and New York.

(They gave an info-graphic.)

Then they stated:

Of the 137 facilities identified, we have identified maximum electricity use at 101 of those facilities, which we estimate to be 10,275 MW. This amount compares with an average annual power demand of about 450,000 MW in the United States, representing a share of 2.3%.

So, did they determine the power usage of 52 or 101 facilities of the 137? Did they mean they only know the location of 52 of them? Why would they not know the location of a facility they identified and purportedly contacted? Regardless, these are also wild estimations, mostly from guessing energy usage of mining devices likely used and multiplying it by number of devices. They assume 100% utilization for that 2.3% number, but I guess that is better than taking an energy usage response were from when they were received, 0ct/Nov 2022, so they could average the year usage based on high winter values.

This is only the EIA's preliminary estimation and they suggest they will release some data at a later point, so maybe we can get some clarity.

The ever anti-Bitcoin Arstechnica's article, of course mentioned the EIA's 101 facilities. It reminds me of the several articles they put out shitting on Bitcoin years ago, calling it a ponzi scheme, having no use, and other moronic political propaganda drivel. It is not surprising from a formerly respectable tech news outlet, bought out and eventually trashed by Conde Naste, who has it written by woke nutjobs working from home, mostly around Boston, Chicago, London, New York City, and San Francisco.

Arstechnica, again, seriously misrepresents what the EIA says, while trying to spin the good part as a bad part.

The EIA made half of their article about the crypto industries long running and massive efforts to incentivize and push mining into renewable energy, sometimes dubbed crypto's Green New Deal (even though the actual GND was a scam and not about the environment). The EIA talked about 5 renewable energy power plants ran by crypto mining operations, using nuclear, hydroelectric damns, and captured waste methane from oil fields, which would normally be burned off in to the atmosphere. They also celebrate the mining facilities contribution to stabilizing energy grids with programs such as ts Large Flexible Load (LPL) in Texas. I've read some publications that even suggest large percentages, loosely around 70% of crypto mining, to be using renewable energy sources, although that seems pretty dubious.

The EIA included that bar charge of power generation and some under utilized power plants and made some lame and unsupported assertions. This was a useless and misleading chart, so poop throwing Arstechnica writers included it too. The EIA neglected to tell us which power plants these were, mentioning only the states.

The chart shows that after Covid, Covid lock-downs, then Biden's energy wars and then his destabilizing of the world pushing for multiple wars...that total power production, not specifically extra for crypto mining, went up in those power plants, just like all of the US's energy consumption. Insinuating that crypto miners caused that, due to their timely entry in 2021 as the energy usage boom struck, is about the most insulting bullshit ever.

Even before Covid, US energy usage had been on a very steep and steady upwards climb, which is understandable, growing nearly 30% between 1988 and 2000, adding a 757 TWh. That's not a bad thing, as US energy production sources are poised to be dominated by the top 3, mostly-clean, "Drill,baby drill!", natural gas, renewables, and crude oil. Coal is dead for US energy production (but it has many important other uses). Crude oil energy usage was inflated just before all the charts and their projections were made, due to crude oil's cost going negative just before Covid. This makes most charts show crude oil as an equal to the other 2, but history shows that oil versus natural gas is frequently a dance of which is cheapest at the moment and how fast industry can shift to it.

There's another missed detail in the US's large post-Covid energy production boom.... it outpaced consumer demands! This makes assuming an increase in production was the result of one consumer type's increased demand, very dubious. The EIP did suggest this and go through the trouble of creating a data-less mysterious chart and attempt to stoke concern over it.

Arstechnica's comment after the useless chart about non-crypto power usage:

These are almost certainly fossil fuel plants that might be reasonable candidates for retirement if it weren't for their use to supply bitcoin miners. So, these miners are contributing to all of the health and climate problems associated with the continued use of fossil fuels.

Permission-less currency is required for freedom, democracy, and independence. The current slave-like control over the world, wielded by US fascism bucks, has allowed the thwarting of democracy and enslaving of the people in these open-air cages. We cannot be free, when we are forced to use worthless debt-based IOU's, under the threat of militarized thugs with guns who will lock you in concrete and steel cages. Every use of a US Dollar, feed into the destabilization of countries around the world, the murders of their endless wars, their race and country based forced-discrimination sanctions, the water-hose of theft spewing from the USD's value in your pocket, and their forced contributions to support the same with their representation-less taxation, which they simply give away to other countries, redistribute to special interests in return for votes, waste, or pocket one way or another.

We can never be "free", while forced to use a centralized, permission-ed, fully controlled currency, which has non-transparent supply. If you study up a bit, you will realize that the US even issuing a fiat currency is illegal and Unconstitutional. A single bad court ruling, taking on the nonsense position of the USD not being fiat. Backed by debt is worse than fiat; worse than being un-backed.