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All these articles seem to imply that bitcoin transactions "cost" energy. My understanding: mining costs energy, the transactions are a side effect of the energ
by gfodor 9y ago
All these articles seem to imply that bitcoin transactions "cost" energy. My understanding: mining costs energy, the transactions are a side effect of the energy. More transactions does not necessarily mean more energy consumption. What causes higher energy consumption is higher USD/BTC price which drives further investment in mining and increases mining difficulty. Transaction volume may or may not be correlated to USD/BTC, but it seems extremely disingenuous to take the total miner energy consumption and divide it by the # of transactions to put an energy cost per transaction, as if that were a thing.
- The_Double 9y agoMy understanding is that Bitcoin would fail if the energy costs would be low, the huge costs are what protects it from an adversary acquiring >50% of the "voting rights" on what transactions are valid. At some point the mining rewards will stop, and transaction fees will be the only reward. The price will be driven by demand, but will need to be kept high.