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Does scrypt mining inherently confer any environmental benefit or energy efficiency for the same level of service provided?
All else being equal which is better for the environment, Litecoin or Bitcoin?
Answers
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No. It is exactly the same balancing mechanism: Electricity and acquisition cost vs revenue.
I would expect the total environmental impact to turn out similar for a given revenue value.
But then, maybe I'm missing something. I'm curious for other answers.
1That is correct. Scrypt miners possibly have higher manufacturing costs and other internal parameters, but for any modern ASIC the power cost for running the chip is higher than the production cost in a matter of days or weeks. In Proof of Work you can equate "utility" for power usage anyway, as the service being provided is literally the destruction of real world resources. – Anonymous – 2015-06-30T07:29:55.103