>The rest are thrown away entirely. They do not form part of the final hash or anything else, the energy spent on them is lost.
I can see that you're trying to paint this as some sort of tragedy, but I'm not really seeing it. How is what you described any different than all the rocks that are "thrown away" when mining for minerals? Is it supposed to be better that the energy went towards terraforming the earth (ie. open pit mines) and therefore created something tangible?
Bitcoin transactions uses 1,719 kWh every 10 minutes.
I don't know that I understand the rock analogy - any unused rocks that are "thrown away" are easily repurposed if desired. The energy used in the other examples is lost to entropy and contributes to global climate change.
>Bitcoin transactions uses 1,719 kWh every 10 minutes.
1. you're comparing the energy use of a single vehicle against the energy use of a global network. if you were at least somewhat honest you'd try to compare like with like.
2. You seem to be missing the point. The quoted paragraph seems to be upset that the trillions of other hashes are being "thrown away entirely", implying that if they weren't thrown away it would somehow be less bad. That's the point I'm disputing. If you think bitcoin isn't a worthwhile use of energy, that argument doesn't need to depend on whether you're "throwing away" hashes or not, so I'm presuming OP is actually concerned about something being "throwing away".
>any unused rocks that are "thrown away" are easily repurposed if desired
>The gas used by armored cars to move cash around is a good example of similar economic cost.
No, both you and the OP seem to have pattern-matched my comment to "bitcoin's energy consumption is similar to [something else]" argument, which is not what I'm talking about.
I can see that you're trying to paint this as some sort of tragedy, but I'm not really seeing it. How is what you described any different than all the rocks that are "thrown away" when mining for minerals? Is it supposed to be better that the energy went towards terraforming the earth (ie. open pit mines) and therefore created something tangible?