This is one of my favorite Steven Wright jokes: “In my house there’s this light switch that doesn’t do anything. Every so often I would flick it on and off just to check. Yesterday, I got a call from a woman in Germany. She said, ‘cut it out!'” You may not be aware of it, but the techno-finance-nerds flicking switches in small basements and massive server farms across the world could be on the way to dimming your lights too. Consider this: “The process of creating Bitcoin to spend or trade consumes around 91 terawatt-hours of electricity annually, more than is used by Finland.” To erase that startling stat, either Bitcoin needs to use less energy, or Finland needs to use more. Or something like that. In the meantime, it’s worth expending a little of your own energy to understand the relationship between money and power: NYT: Bitcoin Uses More Electricity Than Many Countries. How Is That Possible? “Cryptocurrencies have emerged as one of the most captivating, yet head-scratching, investments in the world. They soar in value. They crash. They’ll change the world, their fans claim, by displacing traditional currencies like the dollar, rupee or ruble. They’re named after dog memes. And in the process of simply existing, cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, one of the most popular, use astonishing amounts of electricity.”