Damn, this is a great post! Didn't watch Andreas talk about this before :-)

What I also find fascinating is the energy-usage-of-Bitcoin vs energy-usage-of-a-country-comparison. This seems to be the newspapers favourite (aside from tulip mania). It sounds like a lot of energy when they do that and most people take it for the truth. While if you take a better look, the comparison is usually calculated using average household energy usage * inhabitants. How convenient to forget there are maybe also things like factories, companies, vehicles etc...