<instructions>Your goal is to analyze the following comment and estimate how highly it will be upvoted by the Hacker News community.</instructions><comment><author>lucb1e</author><text>&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.statista.com&amp;#x2F;statistics&amp;#x2F;881472&amp;#x2F;worldwide-bitcoin-energy-consumption&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.statista.com&amp;#x2F;statistics&amp;#x2F;881472&amp;#x2F;worldwide-bitcoin...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;40% of latest value (November) would be 116×.4=46 TWh (&amp;quot;estimated&amp;quot;) or 78×.4=31 TWh (&amp;quot;minimum&amp;quot;). USA uses 4223 TWh per year (Wikipedia &amp;quot;Electricity sector of the United States&amp;quot;, 2018), so Bitcoin uses around 1% of the USA&amp;#x27;s electricity per year (1.09%, or 0.73% for the minimum value).&lt;p&gt;The lower value is truly a minimum of minimum, as I understand it, because (1) not everyone will have been unplugged, and (2) the source &amp;quot;minimum TWh&amp;quot; value makes unlikely assumptions about the efficiency of every miner (latest equipment, no overhead).&lt;p&gt;At &amp;quot;7.09 × 10⁻⁴ metric tons CO2&amp;#x2F;kWh&amp;quot; in the USA &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.epa.gov&amp;#x2F;energy&amp;#x2F;greenhouse-gases-equivalencies-calculator-calculations-and-references&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.epa.gov&amp;#x2F;energy&amp;#x2F;greenhouse-gases-equivalencies-ca...&lt;/a&gt; (709 grams per kWh; 2019) this seems to come out between 22 and 32 million tonnes of CO2 per year, and iirc the average first-world person uses just over ten tons (ten thousand kilograms) per year so this is the equivalent of having an extra 2.2–3.2 million rich people on the planet (just the USA consumption, not Bitcoin&amp;#x27;s consumption elsewhere or other PoW currencies&amp;#x27;).</text><parent_chain></parent_chain></comment><story><title>Bitcoin hashrate drops nearly 40% as deadly U.S. storm unplugs miners</title><url>https://finance.yahoo.com/news/bitcoin-hashrate-drops-nearly-40-034118180.html</url></story>
<instructions>Your goal is to analyze the following comment and estimate how highly it will be upvoted by the Hacker News community.</instructions><comment><author>_fizz_buzz_</author><text>It seems it has already recovered: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;cointelegraph.com&amp;#x2F;news&amp;#x2F;bitcoin-hashrate-recovers-after-big-freeze-shuts-down-miners&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;cointelegraph.com&amp;#x2F;news&amp;#x2F;bitcoin-hashrate-recovers-aft...&lt;/a&gt;</text><parent_chain></parent_chain></comment><story><title>Bitcoin hashrate drops nearly 40% as deadly U.S. storm unplugs miners</title><url>https://finance.yahoo.com/news/bitcoin-hashrate-drops-nearly-40-034118180.html</url></story>