[pelasaco]

I worked 10 years for a Bank. A lot of the mainframe batch processing were unnecessary. A lot of the mainframes running Cobol could be replaced by some smaller hardware and code written in java and C. There are a lot of people working around bad written system or bad written laws/rules, to make the things work. My point is: Wouldn't be fair to compare the amount energy to run bitcoin vs the amount of energy to run the banking system?

[jcranmer]

Yes, it would be fair. However, it is not a comparison that Bitcoin even comes close to winning (Bitcoin uses orders of magnitude more energy), so you instead see takes like "you forgot to account for the energy cost of aircraft carriers!" to try to make the comparison more favorable to Bitcoin.

[pelasaco]

no, but for sure you have to take in account the amount of buildings, air-conditioning, commuters, datacenters, branches, ATMs, bad written code, exchanges. Beside that, Bitcoin probably after the 21 million were mined, should drop the energy consumption (ok, ok, it will take almost 100 years to happen), but it means that in long term, bitcoin will be consuming much less energy than now. Probably impossible to compare apples x apples in that case, but we should at least try it.

[jcranmer]

> but for sure you have to take in account the amount of buildings, air-conditioning, commuters, datacenters, branches, ATMs, bad written code, exchanges.

You also have to do the same thing for Bitcoin if you want the comparison to remain fair. Bitcoin doesn't magically replace the entire financial industry, so you don't want to accidentally include the costs of the things it doesn't replace (such as the bank manager who's deciding whether or not to authorize a mortgage).

[pelasaco]

you are right, but this reduction like "bitcoin is useless because it uses more energy than $COUNTRY/$CITY" is IMO just click bait.

[35fbe7d3d5b9]

https://cbeci.org/cbeci/comparisons/

BTC uses more annual energy than the Netherlands. What did it accomplish when compared to the economic output of the Netherlands?

[35fbe7d3d5b9]

> Wouldn't be fair to compare the amount energy to run bitcoin vs the amount of energy to run the banking system?

Hasn't this comparison been made over and over, and every time it comes out in favor of traditional banking by a mile?

[pelasaco]

could you provide any link or resource for further reading? I never saw anything like that and I would like to know what they are taking into account in this comparison.

[f00zz]

"One Bitcoin transaction would generate the CO2 equivalent to 706,765 swipes of a Visa credit card, according to Digiconomist’s closely-followed index, albeit with none of the convenience of plastic."

https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2021-01-26/is-bit...

[pelasaco]

Thank you for the link, but thats not the same thing. Try to transfer heavy money from Venezuela to Japan, being in Venezuela or from Ghana to Germany, being in Ghana, using your Visa credit card. Try to do it under 24 hours. The fastest way will be flying which can be easily more expensive and risky than bitcoin.

[imtringued]

Visa doesn't use flights to transfer money so you aren't talking about the same thing.

Other cryptocurrencies that use less energy can be used to transfer money to Venezuela so Bitcoin still loses against other cryptocurrencies for fringe use cases.

[imtringued]

You have to consider that Bitcoin offers nothing beyond a ledger/a bar tab. It doesn't do lending, which is the core business of banks. Sure ETH has some smart contracts do that do lending but we are talking about Bitcoin. If Bitcoin could only grow up like his little brother nobody would complain.

[oleganza]

Not quite a fair comparison. Consider how much real estate is used to "park money" in large cities, which in turn leads to artificially higher prices and shortages of housing? What other resources are abused as money substitutes, making corresponding markets less liquid or less predictable? When Bitcoin reaches sufficient capitalization and maturity the landscape of money is going to become simpler while the markets in stocks/real estate/commodities become more fair and efficient. This may have huge implications for overall efficiency in the economies.