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by Feeble 1655 days ago
Sure, but BTC is global so you need to divide BTC's energy usage with the population of New Zealand to make a fair comparison.

New Zealand's population is 0.06% of the world population. Best guess of Bitcoin energy usage put it at around 100 TWh so New Zealands part would be 0.06 TWh.

So I think we should really compare pro rate BTC usage of 0.06 TWh against NZ's 40 TWh. I have no idea how much of NZ's usage is spent on financial system though.
1 comments
Nursie 1655 days ago
The question was how much does the financial system in your country use. So I picked a country to show an example. You then changed the question

> but BTC is global

So what? It supports fewer transactions per second, by a factor of almost 100, than NZ's system uses, it doesn't provide anywhere near the range of services, financial or otherwise, and it burns more power. It's a great comparison as it is. BTC is power-hungry and comparatively low-capability.

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Feeble 1655 days ago
> The question was how much does the financial system in your country use. So I picked a country to show an example. You then changed the question

Not really. I am saying consider that energy usage for traditional banking is also high. If you compare numbers then I believe it needs to be global or pro rata.

> It supports fewer transactions per second

I don't think this is a relevant comparison to be honest. The high energy usage of Bitcoin is not to handle transaction volume, but to secure the network and funds.

Payment cards is a secondary payment layer on top of the banking settlements. Bitcoin is more equivalent to bank settlements.

Second layer solutions for Bitcoin such as Bitcoin Lightning and crypto payment cards (Crypto.com, Coinbase etc) are more comparative to bank settled payment cards and can (and does) provide much higher transaction volumes for Bitcoin. Which also means that payment card energy usage should not be included in any comparison if done (imho).

Just as a side-note, Christmas lights in US used more energy than Bitcoin miners (at least a couple of years ago) and for sure more than a lot of countries. Bitcoin provides sound money for unbanked people all over the world. What would you rather have?

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Nursie 1654 days ago
> Bitcoin provides sound money for unbanked people all over the world

LOL, no, it does not. It does nothing at all for the unbanked.

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