[pavlov]

The cost of building a nuclear reactor in the West is in the ballpark of $10 billion these days. It's not a trivial expense.

If we're going to soon need dozens of nuclear reactors to power cryptocurrencies, that's worth discussing at least. You can't brush it away as something insignificant in the grand scheme of things.

[loverofthings]

No one is going to build nuclear reactors in the West for cryptocurrency mining. Just like no one is building nuclear reactors for powering christmas lights or Amazon servers, or Internet servers.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_phase-out

Reactors are being built primarily for heating and cooling, and eventually vehicle charging.

[wor3q]

Last months bitcoin trade volume was $273 billion.

Let's say a reactor works for 10 years.

That would give $32,760 billion in trade, and reactor cost would be 0.833% of that.

Not a big fee if you ask me.

Of course, if cryptocurrencies would scale so they become significant between other trades, we can't just built thousands of nuclear reactors. This is where proof of stake will come into play.