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It's zero. Exchanging banknotes or coins for goods or services does not consume electricity. Can't believe this was "sincere question".

by lubos 9y ago

ufo 9y ago
Many bitcoin proponents believe that bitcoin can fully replace the current financial system so whenever the energy consumption problem comes up you should expect to hear someone talking about how much banks spend on air conditioning every year.
- SAI_Peregrinus 9y ago
  Of course banks wouldn't go away with Bitcoin. There are still physical branches despite the ubiquity of online banking and credit/debit cards. People like having humans to interact with. And Bitcoin is trying to add in the Lightning network, which requires large trusted entities where people can store their coins for off-chain transactions, IE banks.
  - mstodd 9y ago
    Yes, tech never 100% goes away, you can still find brick and mortar movie rental stores.
- QAPereo 9y ago
  I doubt that they still believe that, as much as they are highly incentivized to claim that. Bitcoin is a disasterous enterprise as it continues to scale poorly. But hey, some people get rich (for a while) and others get to have a waking ideological wet dream, so who cares if it’s a tragic exercise in “printing” entropy and calling it value. Whataboutism isn’t going to change that. Besides, hasn’t the world suffered enough for the sake of grasping ideologues? Does everything need to be seen through these same bland lenses? This is a truly maddening and mad use of a currently limited resource with globally damaging externalities, and it produces nothing except waste heat. If the average Joe really understood this, and just how modest the real potential of blockchain tech probably is, there would be lynchings.
paulgb 9y ago
I think it's a fair question; each transaction of paper money causes wear so it might make sense to amortize the cross of minting over each transaction. Plus transactions between banks would use some energy. One can only assume the energy cost is negligible per transaction compared to bitcoin though, simply because if you scale up the transaction volume of bitcoin to what a real economy would need it's more than we produce.
- taneq 9y ago
  Not to mention adding all of the overhead for legislation, note and coin design, sorting, transporting, anti-counterfeiting...
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
isubkhankulov 9y ago
are you sure? all of these surely have a substantial eco footprint - money production, for both paper and coin - armored cars picking up cash and bringing to the bank - physical locations, banks, check cashing places
King-Aaron 9y ago
It depends on how far you want to go. The cost per transaction would be interesting in real terms. What's the comparison between: - Manufacturing physical currency / Manufacturing the hardware to mine coins - Cost to run POS systems in retail outlets / Cost to run bitcoin network - Cost to run global fiat exchanges (i.e. wallstreet) / Cost to run global bitcoin network Obviously you could drill down as far as you wanted. I'd imagine it would be quite difficult to draw up such a detailed comparison though.
seanmccann 9y ago
This is anecdotal but my family operated a store in a rural vacation area and over half of our customers used cash. In the 2000s, we'd have to drive the cash 30+ minutes to the bank, twice weekly to mitigate the risk of a robbery. We sold the business, but more electronic transfers hopefully reduces the required driving miles, and overall cost to transact in cash.
- oasisbob 9y ago
  I can't find the study right now, but recently saw data suggesting that the cost of money handling is still several times cheaper on a per dollar basis than electronic transactions. If a business accepts any cash at all, the marginal cost of another cash transaction is really low. By your own antidote, your store still saw the value of accepting cash transactions, yeah?
juicyfroot 9y ago
Are you kidding me? Cost to print/replace notes? Cost for teller's, ABM's, security personnel. List goes on and on. As if you said "0".... you think the Laws of Thermodynamics can be violated. The quality of posts here is awful and manned by the technically inept.
oculusthrift 9y ago
what about running bank of america and visa?
- tclancy 9y ago
  If you're suggesting virtual currencies won't need trustworthy managers, I think you better check your wallet.
stale2002 9y ago
The lights at the bank of america HQ don't keep themselves on. Financial transactions are more than just exchanging pieces of paper in person.
withdavidli 9y ago
Coindesk did a write up of this. https://www.coindesk.com/microscope-real-costs-dollar/ https://www.coindesk.com/microscope-real-costs-dollar/ Looks like data was taken from places like: https://www.ecb.europa.eu/stats/policy_and_exchange_rates/banknotes+coins/circulation/html/index.en.html https://www.ecb.europa.eu/stats/policy_and_exchange_rates/ba... and rest of the numbers were taking into account of how much each note costs to make. "The Euro publishes sustainability statistics on their currency, and according to latest estimates, 3 billion banknotes printed in 2003 had an equivalent energy impact of 460,000 60W bulbs switched on for a year, which equates to 240 million kWh, or 0.87 million GJ. With circulation now at 15.8 billion notes, this would scale up to 4.6 million GJ (European Central Bank, 2007). To get to a global figure, for the purposes of this report, I will be multiplying this figure by a factor of four (i.e. a proportional share of global M0/M1 money supply). Therefore, we reach a figure of 18.4 million GJ, which would correspond to almost 3.07 million tonnes of CO2 equivalent." This is just making a bank note, nothing about cost to distribute (guarding money, banking system, credit system).
- lubos 9y ago
  According to https://digiconomist.net/bitcoin-energy-consumption https://digiconomist.net/bitcoin-energy-consumption, Bitcoin is currently at 42 TWh. That's over 20 million tonnes of CO2. If we assume energy costs to produce annual supply of new banknotes and coins in entire world is at 1 TWh. You see how insane energy consumption of Bitcoin really is. And that's comparing an entire money supply of the world to single cryptocurrency. Banks cannot be part of the equation as the need for banks would not cease if the world would switch to Bitcoin or similar.
  - withdavidli 9y ago
    Fair point. All I was trying to show was that currencies like the Euro or USD has greater than zero energy usage to create/distribute. I don't think BTC will stay the top crypto if it cannot resolve its current issues (though new ones will come after). Articles like takes stance, whether they know it or not, of this is here to stay for a long time and we need to deal with the ramifications. If that is true, more people are going to work on solving this issue either, or all of, through energy regulation, better hardware, better renewable energy, mass adoption of different coins, or moving to POS (or anything other proof system) instead of POW.
contravariant 9y ago
That's pretty much the only time it clearly consumes energy; and even worse, manpower.

It's zero. Exchanging banknotes or coins for goods or services does not consume electricity. Can't believe this was "sincere question".

by lubos 9y ago

It's zero. Exchanging banknotes or coins for goods or services does not consume electricity. Can't believe this was "sincere question".

ufo 9y ago

Many bitcoin proponents believe that bitcoin can fully replace the current financial system so whenever the energy consumption problem comes up you should expect to hear someone talking about how much banks spend on air conditioning every year.

SAI_Peregrinus 9y ago
Of course banks wouldn't go away with Bitcoin. There are still physical branches despite the ubiquity of online banking and credit/debit cards. People like having humans to interact with. And Bitcoin is trying to add in the Lightning network, which requires large trusted entities where people can store their coins for off-chain transactions, IE banks.
- mstodd 9y ago
  Yes, tech never 100% goes away, you can still find brick and mortar movie rental stores.
QAPereo 9y ago
I doubt that they still believe that, as much as they are highly incentivized to claim that. Bitcoin is a disasterous enterprise as it continues to scale poorly. But hey, some people get rich (for a while) and others get to have a waking ideological wet dream, so who cares if it’s a tragic exercise in “printing” entropy and calling it value. Whataboutism isn’t going to change that. Besides, hasn’t the world suffered enough for the sake of grasping ideologues? Does everything need to be seen through these same bland lenses? This is a truly maddening and mad use of a currently limited resource with globally damaging externalities, and it produces nothing except waste heat. If the average Joe really understood this, and just how modest the real potential of blockchain tech probably is, there would be lynchings.

paulgb 9y ago

I think it's a fair question; each transaction of paper money causes wear so it might make sense to amortize the cross of minting over each transaction. Plus transactions between banks would use some energy. One can only assume the energy cost is negligible per transaction compared to bitcoin though, simply because if you scale up the transaction volume of bitcoin to what a real economy would need it's more than we produce.

taneq 9y ago
Not to mention adding all of the overhead for legislation, note and coin design, sorting, transporting, anti-counterfeiting...

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

isubkhankulov 9y ago

are you sure? all of these surely have a substantial eco footprint - money production, for both paper and coin - armored cars picking up cash and bringing to the bank - physical locations, banks, check cashing places

King-Aaron 9y ago

It depends on how far you want to go. The cost per transaction would be interesting in real terms. What's the comparison between: - Manufacturing physical currency / Manufacturing the hardware to mine coins - Cost to run POS systems in retail outlets / Cost to run bitcoin network - Cost to run global fiat exchanges (i.e. wallstreet) / Cost to run global bitcoin network Obviously you could drill down as far as you wanted. I'd imagine it would be quite difficult to draw up such a detailed comparison though.

seanmccann 9y ago

This is anecdotal but my family operated a store in a rural vacation area and over half of our customers used cash. In the 2000s, we'd have to drive the cash 30+ minutes to the bank, twice weekly to mitigate the risk of a robbery. We sold the business, but more electronic transfers hopefully reduces the required driving miles, and overall cost to transact in cash.

oasisbob 9y ago
I can't find the study right now, but recently saw data suggesting that the cost of money handling is still several times cheaper on a per dollar basis than electronic transactions. If a business accepts any cash at all, the marginal cost of another cash transaction is really low. By your own antidote, your store still saw the value of accepting cash transactions, yeah?

juicyfroot 9y ago

Are you kidding me? Cost to print/replace notes? Cost for teller's, ABM's, security personnel. List goes on and on. As if you said "0".... you think the Laws of Thermodynamics can be violated. The quality of posts here is awful and manned by the technically inept.

oculusthrift 9y ago

what about running bank of america and visa?

tclancy 9y ago
If you're suggesting virtual currencies won't need trustworthy managers, I think you better check your wallet.

stale2002 9y ago

The lights at the bank of america HQ don't keep themselves on. Financial transactions are more than just exchanging pieces of paper in person.

withdavidli 9y ago

Coindesk did a write up of this. https://www.coindesk.com/microscope-real-costs-dollar/ https://www.coindesk.com/microscope-real-costs-dollar/ Looks like data was taken from places like: https://www.ecb.europa.eu/stats/policy_and_exchange_rates/banknotes+coins/circulation/html/index.en.html https://www.ecb.europa.eu/stats/policy_and_exchange_rates/ba... and rest of the numbers were taking into account of how much each note costs to make. "The Euro publishes sustainability statistics on their currency, and according to latest estimates, 3 billion banknotes printed in 2003 had an equivalent energy impact of 460,000 60W bulbs switched on for a year, which equates to 240 million kWh, or 0.87 million GJ. With circulation now at 15.8 billion notes, this would scale up to 4.6 million GJ (European Central Bank, 2007). To get to a global figure, for the purposes of this report, I will be multiplying this figure by a factor of four (i.e. a proportional share of global M0/M1 money supply). Therefore, we reach a figure of 18.4 million GJ, which would correspond to almost 3.07 million tonnes of CO2 equivalent." This is just making a bank note, nothing about cost to distribute (guarding money, banking system, credit system).

lubos 9y ago
According to https://digiconomist.net/bitcoin-energy-consumption https://digiconomist.net/bitcoin-energy-consumption, Bitcoin is currently at 42 TWh. That's over 20 million tonnes of CO2. If we assume energy costs to produce annual supply of new banknotes and coins in entire world is at 1 TWh. You see how insane energy consumption of Bitcoin really is. And that's comparing an entire money supply of the world to single cryptocurrency. Banks cannot be part of the equation as the need for banks would not cease if the world would switch to Bitcoin or similar.
- withdavidli 9y ago
  Fair point. All I was trying to show was that currencies like the Euro or USD has greater than zero energy usage to create/distribute. I don't think BTC will stay the top crypto if it cannot resolve its current issues (though new ones will come after). Articles like takes stance, whether they know it or not, of this is here to stay for a long time and we need to deal with the ramifications. If that is true, more people are going to work on solving this issue either, or all of, through energy regulation, better hardware, better renewable energy, mass adoption of different coins, or moving to POS (or anything other proof system) instead of POW.

contravariant 9y ago

That's pretty much the only time it clearly consumes energy; and even worse, manpower.