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If that's the case, I'm not into it. It's not sustainable. What an incredible waste of resources. And presumably the energy cost correlates to the usage of the

by eudora 8y ago

If that's the case, I'm not into it. It's not sustainable. What an incredible waste of resources. And presumably the energy cost correlates to the usage of the currency? How can it possibly become anything like widely used if it's so pricey? (Come to think of it, one way is the lightning network. Which doesn't use the blockchain for almost everything: https://lightning.network/ https://lightning.network/)

cdiddy2 8y ago
The energy cost does not correlate with the usage of the network. A block with 1 transaction in it needs the same amount of energy as a block with 3000 transactions in it. The peak energy cost is limited by the price of bitcoin though.
plankers 8y ago
So by your metric the global banking industry, which uses several orders of magnitude more electricity than the bitcoin network, also isn't sustainable. A single bitcoin may be pricey, but fortunately there are eight decimal places after that first coin, enabling users to spend however much or however little they want. You're right about the lightning network, it stands to revolutionize the bitcoin network by providing an instantaneous zero-confirmation payment layer on top of the bitcoin blockchain. Critically, though, it wouldn't work at all without the security provided by all that "wasted" electricity. Think of the lightning network like the HTTP protocol layer resting on top of the TCP/IP communication layer. HTTP wouldn't work without TCP/IP and TCP/IP wouldn't be nearly as useful without the myriad of protocol layers which it enables. This is still early times for bitcoin, and you ain't seen nothin' yet.
- eudora 8y ago
  The global banking system is used by drastically more people than Bitcoin. And I expect the transactions per person of the global banking system is orders of magnitude higher. Energy use per transaction for Bitcoin seems much, much higher, but I don't have numbers obviously. But hopefully lightning helps.

by eudora 8y ago

cdiddy2 8y ago

The energy cost does not correlate with the usage of the network. A block with 1 transaction in it needs the same amount of energy as a block with 3000 transactions in it. The peak energy cost is limited by the price of bitcoin though.

plankers 8y ago

So by your metric the global banking industry, which uses several orders of magnitude more electricity than the bitcoin network, also isn't sustainable. A single bitcoin may be pricey, but fortunately there are eight decimal places after that first coin, enabling users to spend however much or however little they want. You're right about the lightning network, it stands to revolutionize the bitcoin network by providing an instantaneous zero-confirmation payment layer on top of the bitcoin blockchain. Critically, though, it wouldn't work at all without the security provided by all that "wasted" electricity. Think of the lightning network like the HTTP protocol layer resting on top of the TCP/IP communication layer. HTTP wouldn't work without TCP/IP and TCP/IP wouldn't be nearly as useful without the myriad of protocol layers which it enables. This is still early times for bitcoin, and you ain't seen nothin' yet.

eudora 8y ago
The global banking system is used by drastically more people than Bitcoin. And I expect the transactions per person of the global banking system is orders of magnitude higher. Energy use per transaction for Bitcoin seems much, much higher, but I don't have numbers obviously. But hopefully lightning helps.