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looorg [soylentnews.org] writes:

Researchers have calculated, or approximated, the cost of creating bitcoins and other cryptocurrencies. Then compared said cryptocurrency costs vs the cost of real actual mining for minerals. Mining bitcoins etc requires more power then most actual mining such as actual gold. An average bitcoin-dollar, or if you will a dollar worth of a bitcoin, is calculated to require about 17 megajoule of energy, while digging up a dollar worth gold requires 5 megajoule. Aluminum is still a lot more expensive then most of the cryptocoins to produce as it requires a massive 122 megajoule to create a dollar worth of.

The Carbon dioxide creation due to cryptocurrencies mining is also estimated to be between 3 and 15 million tonnes, between January 2016 and June 2018. But a Chinese bitcoin emits four times as much CO2 as a Canadian one, so it is highly dependent on the form of energy used. I didn't find any comparable numbers to how much CO2 is created from the production of Aluminum, Gold or other metals.

Quantification of energy and carbon costs for mining cryptocurrencies
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41893-018-0152-7 [nature.com]

Bitcoin Will Burn the Planet Down. The Question: How Fast?
https://www.wired.com/story/bitcoin-will-burn-planet-down-how-fast/ [wired.com]

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