A single transaction consumes 600kWh of electricity and yields 95 grams of e-waste -- enough to power a US home for 20 days. [1]. This is projected to increase. It's 700,000 times less efficient than Visa. If Visa alone were ported to Bitcoin levels of inefficiency it would consume 38X the entire world's power generation capacity. [2] It's actively anti-efficient and becomes less efficient as the price scales and as technology improves. It has worse wealth distribution than any banana republic. [3] The PoW system creates a net negative drag on any economy approximately equivalent to a 48% rate of inflation [4]. It's slow, taking up to 10 minutes to process. It's inefficient. It allows payments to terrorists and rogue states [5]. It's built to allow scams to thrive. It's not even anonymous, it's pseudonymous and tools will automate deanonymization if it ever manages to make it through the top few issues, which, let's face it, it won't.
A PoW coin has the same economic impact as a 48% rate of inflation. If that’s what we have to pay to “decentralize” our currency it’s time to stop trying to do that. The burden is not on the incumbent to prove why it’s better, it’s on the new guy.
That’s what we’ve learned from this decade long experiment: it’s just not worth it. Time to put this idea to bed and pursue something worthwhile.
[1] https://digiconomist.net/bitcoin-energy-consumption
[2] https://www.cbeci.org/
[3] https://www.newsbtc.com/2019/08/14/2-of-bitcoin-addresses-co...
[4] https://www.snb.ch/n/mmr/reference/sem_2019_05_31_koeppl/sou...
[5] https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/ne...