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by gtrubetskoy 3122 days ago
Another aspect that is frequently overlooked is that keeping bitcoin requires no energy at all (literally you can write the key on a piece of paper), and a transfer (not considering the mining aspect) requires very little as well (it can be an SMS message).

Contrast that with the all the office buildings (e.g. Manhattan) and computer systems required by banks, ongoing. The banking industry has google-size datacenters as well, they just don't like to talk about it. As well as the energy to print the paper/plastic cash and all the statements, etc. It is very difficult to estimate the true energy consumed by fiat, while bitcoin energy is in the hashrate, and that's pretty much it.
2 comments
roywiggins 3122 days ago
Without the mining aspect transactions couldn't happen on the blockchain, so it's pretty unrealistic to neglect it.
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6d6b73 3122 days ago
You don't need banks to store cash. Bitcoin without electricity is useless, cash on the other hand is not.
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gtrubetskoy 3122 days ago
But you do need banks to store cash. And the bank better have a secure vault and security guards and cameras and all that.

An elliptic curve key, which is what possession of bitcoin is, is just a large number. To send a bitcoin you need to create a "transaction", and in fact the only aspect of generating a bitcoin transaction that requires energy is the SHA calculation, not something you can do in pencil, the EC math is actually simple enough that a computer is not required.

Also your argument that cash does not require energy does not apply to the cashless society we have become today, when was the last time you actually used cash? Credit cards are useless without electricity.

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6d6b73 3122 days ago
I have cash in my pocket. I'm not a bank. Therefore you don't need bank to store cash. Simple? And I use cash on a daily basis.. We're far from being the cashless society you claim we are.
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gtrubetskoy 3122 days ago
But you can only have so much cash in your pocket. The bitcoin private key is 32 bytes always, regardless of the amount.

For example here is the famous 37 BTC ($500,000+) donation to Andreas Antonopoulos yesterday, this couldn't be done with cash, at least not as seamlessly, inexpensively and quickly:

https://blockchain.info/tx/e68ebe16e6aaa08e3f9d271ba78aaeb4c...

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