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by lurking15 867 days ago
> as soon as you do anthing offchain, bitcoin doesn't protect you

except that most, if not all, off-chain networks are still based on-chain and have mechanisms for being a relatively secure way for exchanging day-to-day without having to settle on-chain for every transaction
1 comments
Bitbitcowurgh 867 days ago
Imagine a world were someone with a private key could send money transparently to someone else by just signing the transaction publicly.

Suddenly you don't need PoW anymore. The only thing bitcoins gigantic energy consumption does is making sure there is only one central blockchain. Nothing more. And for that it needs 2% of total US Power usage...

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lurking15 867 days ago
Except the whole point of bitcoin is that it's a scarce commodity enforced through power consumption (something that's a limiting factor to adversaries)

> The only thing bitcoins gigantic energy consumption does is making sure there is only one central blockchain.

which is how you constrain supply in a decentralized way with an independent time-keeping mechanism

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