We need to get in front of the "BTC consumes more power than several countries" meme. Push the fact that Porn and On-line gaming consume more power than BTC, and have arguably less "usefulness", if the goal is reduced energy use, they ought to go after th

citations - BTC used 123 TWh annually. [0]

Computers, data centers and networks consume about 10% of all the world energy. [1] 4 percent of websites are estimated to be porn [2] a single gaming computer costs about up to 1400 kWh annually. [3] So the porn websites are about 3X bitcoin and BTC represents around 8.7m gaming computers.

0 https://www.moneysupermarket.com/gas-and-electricity/features/crypto-energy-consumption/

1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IT_energy_management

2 https://www.statista.com/chart/16959/share-of-the-internet-that-is-porn/

3 https://computerinfobits.com/how-much-energy-do-gaming-computers-use/#:~:text=A%20gaming%20computer%20requires%20somewhere,than%20a%20laptop's%20power%20usage

The actual reasons for the hostility is political power, BTC is not under politicians control. But they can't say that part out loud. Instead they suddenly have a deep concern for the planet, and want to eliminate ... well, certainly not the stuff (porn and gaming) that takes up a larger share.

Also, BTC has the potential to help the transition to renewable energy - https://cointelegraph.com/news/bitcoin-mining-renewable-energy-transition

BTC mining can be switched off to help power usage during a crisis, such as a heat wave. It makes sense to have that 'reserve' used on typical days, and then switch to keep AC running and people alive. Paying miners to forego profit can save lives. Yet in an example of editorialized headline we get this; "Texas paid bitcoin miner more than $31 million to cut energy usage during heat wave" <-- yes, they did, and it is one of the few things that Texas did right. Adjusting the limited output of the grid to adapt to changing demands is actually reasonable. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/bitcoin-mining-cryptocurrency-riot-texas-power-grid/

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