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by XorNot 1979 days ago
This reply to that thread addresses the better comparison of power usage I've seen (https://twitter.com/ipvkyte/status/1350922562935681024):

(in response to a single BTC transaction consuming 621 kwh)

A Tesla gets 4.1 miles per KWh. So one transaction costs 2,546 miles. Seattle to Boston is 3k miles.

Paying for a burger with bitcoin has the same environmental cost as driving that burger to you from the other coast.
2 comments
disruptalot 1979 days ago
This is not how it works at all. A bitcoin block can have 0 transactions and still need the same energy to produce.

a) Sending payments is not the only purpose of the network, it's issuance, it's security, it's to make the ledger immutable.

b) No one's buying a burger with bitcoin. Bitcoin's production is a monetary base. Using the same block space you can have an infinite number of economic transactions happen with the same power consumption (block) on multiple layers, each with a degrading level of security. Of course you don't need the full force of the bitcoin network for a coffee or burger.

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yunohn 1979 days ago
> No one's buying a burger with bitcoin.

That’s exactly the point being made, isn’t it? No one uses Bitcoin as a currency for real transactions.

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runeks 1979 days ago
Bitcoin mining on a block secures not just this block's transactions, but the transactions in all previous blocks as well. For each block that is added to the blockchain more transactions are secured by the following blocks. Consequently, these "power usage per transaction"-figures are misleading.
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imtringued 1979 days ago
Although you are correct I feel like you skipped over an important detail that is crucial to your argument.

The power consumption does not depend on the block size.

Securing blocks has a cost that is independent of the block size. Bitcoin Cash is a good example.

I also find it interesting that Bitcoin Cash is not as prone to deflation which means that in theory you could actually use it as money. It never caught on so it is effectively dead though. It's best to forget about it.

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sammax 1979 days ago
Not really. You could interpret it as older transactions are massively more expensive than newer ones and every transaction we make will have perpetual upkeep costs for as long as we keep running Bitcoin, but the overall result isn't changed by that, the average cost per transaction is the same
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