Yes! you can, this is exactly what I am saying. Think about it: 0.56% of electricity _globally_ is consumed by Bitcoin... there are a _max_ of 178 ways to divide up the remaining energy. If you want to designate global housing to be one of the things to compare to, you can do that, now there are <177 things left to compare too (probably quite a bit less).
No matter how you go about categorizing things, it's a very short list for the entire planet. Most of them will bring real material value to everyone's lives (electricity in the home), vs Bitcoin which caters to a tiny minority for the purpose of speculating on intrinsic value - most of the world would not notice or care if it disappeared, I'm willing to bet everything above it on the list would be quite noticeable around the world no matter how you go about categorizing things without overlap.
Most people in this giant thread are either throwing out rhetorical comparisons like icecream, proposing that bitcoin be treated like one of the many unnecessary pleasures in the world, yet in absolute terms it dwarfs every single one of them in energy use while serving orders of magnitude less people making it's relative value for pleasure or otherwise extremely expensive; Or, they (and other articles) are comparing it to the likes of Visa - in very convincing and well thought out ways, yet missing one critical detail: bitcoin does not actually serve the entire planets transactions, no where even near, that's not even it's purpose any more.
I'm essentially saying put it in comparative context without needing to actually compare individual arbitrary things: it's global use of electricity, what is it being used for and by how many, it's not hard to see it being at the extreme end of disproportionate and useless.
Ok, fair point. But how large is the list? I'd love to see it.
Also, keep in mind, blockchain is in its infancy. I expect things to change dramatically. We'll see a lot of regulations in the future and I believe Bitcoin will be the driving force to shift industries to use green energy.
No matter how you go about categorizing things, it's a very short list for the entire planet. Most of them will bring real material value to everyone's lives (electricity in the home), vs Bitcoin which caters to a tiny minority for the purpose of speculating on intrinsic value - most of the world would not notice or care if it disappeared, I'm willing to bet everything above it on the list would be quite noticeable around the world no matter how you go about categorizing things without overlap.
Most people in this giant thread are either throwing out rhetorical comparisons like icecream, proposing that bitcoin be treated like one of the many unnecessary pleasures in the world, yet in absolute terms it dwarfs every single one of them in energy use while serving orders of magnitude less people making it's relative value for pleasure or otherwise extremely expensive; Or, they (and other articles) are comparing it to the likes of Visa - in very convincing and well thought out ways, yet missing one critical detail: bitcoin does not actually serve the entire planets transactions, no where even near, that's not even it's purpose any more.
I'm essentially saying put it in comparative context without needing to actually compare individual arbitrary things: it's global use of electricity, what is it being used for and by how many, it's not hard to see it being at the extreme end of disproportionate and useless.