| I actually think this is a really interesting argument. Here's some quick napkin math that shows a large enough difference that, I think, you can't just shut this down as a strawman: 17.7M barrels of oil annually by bitcoin mining operations 8.16B barrels of oil by US banking sector employees These numbers don't count the physical infrastructure, servers, and other plant that these businesses own, operate, heat, keep the lights on in. Here are my sources: One stat I just read says that the top 20 North American banks employ 1.2 million people. That's 1.2M people eating and commuting 5 days a week for the purpose of supporting fiat. With a quick investigation: -US per capita annual barrels of oil: 6800 (1) -Bitcoin annual Terrawatt hours: 30.1 (2) -6800 * 1.2M = 8.16B barrels of oil by US banking sector employees (3) 1: https://www.statista.com/statistics/250220/ranking-of-united... 2: http://www.wired.co.uk/article/how-much-energy-does-bitcoin-... 3: http://www.kylesconverter.com/energy,-work,-and-heat/terawat... |
They aren't really "supporting fiat" as you say, they do things that (presumably) have value like storing money, making loans and...whatever else it is that banks do.
If all the world's central banks decided tomorrow to stop the printing presses banks would still have a function in society independent of "supporting fiat" as they have had for a long time.