Australia consumes 5831 petajoules [1] or 1620 terawatt-hours yearly. In my model miners would consume a comparable amount (actually less): 800 terawatt-hours. Therefore Bitcoin and the Australian economy extract comparable economic value from energy.<p>IOW if you think Bitcoin is not worth it, then Australia is not worth it :) Thanks for this interesting comparison!<p>[1] <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.industry.gov.au&#x2F;Office-of-the-Chief-Economist&#x2F;Publications&#x2F;Documents&#x2F;aes&#x2F;2015-australian-energy-statistics.pdf" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.industry.gov.au&#x2F;Office-of-the-Chief-Economist&#x2F;Pub...</a>