[manquer]

Why is it bonkers ?

Bitcoins are just speculative assets . All crypto is, nobody is actually doing real economic transactions on them, I.e buying and selling services/goods for bitcoin. It is not practical to do so with transaction/gas fees .

If you think of it as an Asset transactions then it makes sense, those are always expensive.

A real estate deal for a house will have buyer agent, seller agent government taxes etc easily 5-10% , if you sell an artwork a gallery will probably charge upwards of 10-20% etc.

[qqqwerty]

A digital currency using ~844 kWh per transaction is absolutely bonkers. This is irrespective of any fees, taxes, or commissions associated with the transaction. If I buy real estate with bitcoin, all of those would still apply, but my choice of using bitcoin would result in an extra 844 kWh of energy consumed compared to using cash. Bonkers.

[manquer]

Digital asset, not currency. That is the key difference, asset transfers being expensive(in transaction fees) is not abnormal.

I don't like it, I don't support this industry, it is still big waste of energy, however if you see it from a lens of asset instead of currency then it kind of make sense that transactions are expensive.

Money has four functions traditionally, Bitcoin does not work for three of them: medium of exchange(too expensive), unit of account(too volatile), standard of deferred payment (too volatile), it kind of works as "store of value", i.e asset despite the volatility as the deflationary pressure due to its by design purchasing power increases.

Smarter economists can explain it better than me, my point is, don't think of it as a currency, it is really not, just an asset class ( still wasteful).