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by Nursie 1880 days ago
Thought experiment - Bitcoin supports fewer transactions than are needed for a mid-sized town, yet uses more power than most small countries.

The upper limit of the amount of power a country’s financial system could use is the power footprint of that country. Likely the real usage is a small percentage of that, but that’s the upper limit.

Now, given Bitcoin uses more power than countries of millions, but supports the transaction load of a few hundred thousand, do you think it is the slightest bit possible your comparison would come out favourable to Bitcoin?
2 comments
ajkdhcb2 1880 days ago
Bitcoins are produced and secured through the mining process. It doesnt just process a transaction.

Dollars are backed and secured by the USA. How much energy does the USA military use?

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Nursie 1879 days ago
That's not just to secure the value of dollars, your comparison is meaningless. Also, reapply the thought experiment above - BTC is used by a handful of people, yet consumes more than countries of millions.
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ajkdhcb2 1878 days ago
The total market value of BTC is higher than the Russian Ruble. It is securing a lot of value. https://coinmarketcap.com/fiat-currencies/

>That's not just to secure the value of dollars, your comparison is meaningless.

Yes the calculation is not complete, but it demonstrates that the other calculations are completely invalid too because it doesn't consider those factors either

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Nursie 1878 days ago
The question was what are the efficiencies per transaction.

The total market cap of a cryptocurrency is a somewhat meaningless statistic, it certainly doesn't directly translate to value.

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ajkdhcb2 1877 days ago
> The question was what are the efficiencies per transaction.

Yes and the calculations are all completely invalid. Not sure what you are missing.

You need a whole infrastructure to power a transaction. That means an asset with value, a secure way to broadcast it, for other people to see it, etc. Running the infrastructure and securing it is absurdly expensive for the traditional system; they are even employing perhaps millions of people to run the worldwide network. The human cost is extreme but you are limiting the discussion to energy expended. Unless you consider all this how can you put the energy usage of BTC in context? This is especially true since a system like BTC, the energy used is not even proportional to the number of transactions that are processed. Extrapolations don't even consider that the mining reward is motivating miners but it will disappear completely in future - i.e. the energy is being used to build a system and distribute assets that can exist for endless years. All the logic is a joke

It's like saying it's cheaper to solve an equation by hand than to build software that can do it automatically. But doing it by hand requires human intervention, while that one-time cost of building the software can automate the work, be adapted for myriad usecases and run for the next 1000 years

The consequences of expending the energy to create and distribute this 'unit of account' is profound and incalculable, even if one wants to argue that a decentralised financial system with mass surveillance like BTC will have a negative impact on society

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wqsz7xn 1877 days ago
The aim wasn't for it to be favourable to bitcoin. I'd honestly just like a comparison.
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