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You are leaving out significant amounts of energy consumed in the legacy financial system. Those bills cost energy to produce. The bank had to be built. There

You are leaving out significant amounts of energy consumed in the legacy financial system. Those bills cost energy to produce. The bank had to be built. There was a teller there, did they spend any energy driving to the bank that day? Did you use a duffel bag? Where’d that come from? Etc. I’m not sure that any of this is meaningful in any way.

slg 6y ago
Which is also true on the opposite side or did your mining rig magically materialize out of nowhere? The difference is that a lot of the infrastructure for the traditional system is already built out which reduces the marginal energy costs to a degree that isn't the case for cryptocurrencies.
newswasboring 6y ago
The mining equipment needed to be produced. The mining rig needed to be installed, many factories needed to be produced. There are workers in these mines, did they spend energy driving a car? Did they use a gym bag? Where did that come from? BTC is not magic dude, it has externalities too.
choward 6y ago
This "legacy financial system" comparison isn't fair. I use standard banking and haven't been to a bank in years. I think a more reasonable comparison is with online only banks. Our current system doesn't actually need physical cash. You just need banks keeping score for individual accounts and a central bank keeping score of the banks' accounts.
UncleMeat 6y ago
How many people go speak to a bank teller to transfer funds? My bank can give me a mortgage for my home. The banking system is doing way way way more than counting how much people own and shifting that around. If the concern is the cost of brick and mortar banks then we can solve that with technology much more effectively than btc.
- bingbong70 6y ago
  The problem with "interventionistas" with little/no understanding of bitcoin is, they look at one feature/component of btc's game theory in isolation and state "I can do this particular thing cheaper/faster/easier" while ignoring the 100 other aligned incentive structures that are lost with their 2nd/3rd-order-effect altering solutions. Bitcoin is too elegantly designed to approach in this fashion.
sharpneli 6y ago
The Visa kWh figure includes all that. The office workers and whatnot. The source is Visa corporate responsibility data. https://usa.visa.com/dam/VCOM/download/corporate-responsibility/visa-2019-corporate-responsibility-report.pdf https://usa.visa.com/dam/VCOM/download/corporate-responsibil... that's for 2019. They include air travel and whatnot. Basically the whole energy consumption of the company. Also including building stuff etc. Visa doesn't share that in order to poke at Bitcoin. They share that because enviromentalism is hip nowadays. So they want to tell how they're improving their CO2 emissions as a company.
- francoi8 6y ago
  Back of the envelope calculations for the yearly operation of: - Visa: 7 million GJ - Bitcoin: 403 million GJ
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - oblio 6y ago
    And I imagine Bitcoin is growing much faster than Visa.
lr4444lr 6y ago
Then you might as well price in the cost of the computers and GPUs assembly into Bitcoin's cost. I don't see the utility in going down this chain of production.
yunesj 6y ago
If you compare the money (resources) spent bitcoin mining and the money (resources) spent operating the world’s central banks, then the costs are similar.
- notahacker 6y ago
  The world's central banks do not use more electricity than Argentina, and they handle a lot more money.
  - bingbong70 6y ago
    How well does that "money" hold its value?
    - notahacker 6y ago
      Money is intended to transact with, not for speculation on it increasing purchasing power, which is great, because it can be spent on or invested in things which create value instead. And at a rate of more than 10 transactions per second worldwide!
      - bingbong70 6y ago
        You are confusing "currency" with "money", there is a difference and it is not insignificant.
        notahacker 6y ago
        Someone should tell all the people who've studied numismatics for their entire life! Even the etymology of the word "money" derives from the location of the mint in Rome.
        bingbong70 6y ago
        Before the fiat system, national currencies could have been considered closer to "money" because they were actually backed by commodities. Now we have pure currency and all fiat currencies go to ~0 in less than 100 years. USD, GBP, CAD = currency Bitcoin, Gold, Silver = money
anigbrowl 6y ago
Those bills cost energy to produce. The bank had to be built. There was a teller there, did they spend any energy driving to the bank that day? Did you use a duffel bag? Where’d that come from? Etc. Just like the mining rigs that produce bitcoin. It seems like you're conflating fixed costs (of plant and machinery) with marginal costs (of exchanging some amount of BTC vs fiat).
PragmaticPulp 6y ago
> Those bills cost energy to produce. The bank had to be built. There was a teller there, did they spend any energy driving to the bank that day? Did you use a duffel bag? It's 2021. Carrying around duffel bags of paper bills received from a human bank teller is not how anyone manages their cash or transactions. Bitcoin is not the only way to digitally transact. It's not even a good way. In practice, it's just about the worst way to handle transactions unless you have no other options.

slg 6y ago

Which is also true on the opposite side or did your mining rig magically materialize out of nowhere? The difference is that a lot of the infrastructure for the traditional system is already built out which reduces the marginal energy costs to a degree that isn't the case for cryptocurrencies.

newswasboring 6y ago

The mining equipment needed to be produced. The mining rig needed to be installed, many factories needed to be produced. There are workers in these mines, did they spend energy driving a car? Did they use a gym bag? Where did that come from? BTC is not magic dude, it has externalities too.

choward 6y ago

This "legacy financial system" comparison isn't fair. I use standard banking and haven't been to a bank in years. I think a more reasonable comparison is with online only banks. Our current system doesn't actually need physical cash. You just need banks keeping score for individual accounts and a central bank keeping score of the banks' accounts.

UncleMeat 6y ago

How many people go speak to a bank teller to transfer funds? My bank can give me a mortgage for my home. The banking system is doing way way way more than counting how much people own and shifting that around. If the concern is the cost of brick and mortar banks then we can solve that with technology much more effectively than btc.

bingbong70 6y ago
The problem with "interventionistas" with little/no understanding of bitcoin is, they look at one feature/component of btc's game theory in isolation and state "I can do this particular thing cheaper/faster/easier" while ignoring the 100 other aligned incentive structures that are lost with their 2nd/3rd-order-effect altering solutions. Bitcoin is too elegantly designed to approach in this fashion.

sharpneli 6y ago

The Visa kWh figure includes all that. The office workers and whatnot. The source is Visa corporate responsibility data. https://usa.visa.com/dam/VCOM/download/corporate-responsibility/visa-2019-corporate-responsibility-report.pdf https://usa.visa.com/dam/VCOM/download/corporate-responsibil... that's for 2019. They include air travel and whatnot. Basically the whole energy consumption of the company. Also including building stuff etc. Visa doesn't share that in order to poke at Bitcoin. They share that because enviromentalism is hip nowadays. So they want to tell how they're improving their CO2 emissions as a company.

francoi8 6y ago
Back of the envelope calculations for the yearly operation of: - Visa: 7 million GJ - Bitcoin: 403 million GJ
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- oblio 6y ago
  And I imagine Bitcoin is growing much faster than Visa.

lr4444lr 6y ago

Then you might as well price in the cost of the computers and GPUs assembly into Bitcoin's cost. I don't see the utility in going down this chain of production.

yunesj 6y ago

If you compare the money (resources) spent bitcoin mining and the money (resources) spent operating the world’s central banks, then the costs are similar.

notahacker 6y ago
The world's central banks do not use more electricity than Argentina, and they handle a lot more money.
- bingbong70 6y ago
  How well does that "money" hold its value?
  - notahacker 6y ago
    Money is intended to transact with, not for speculation on it increasing purchasing power, which is great, because it can be spent on or invested in things which create value instead. And at a rate of more than 10 transactions per second worldwide!
    - bingbong70 6y ago
      You are confusing "currency" with "money", there is a difference and it is not insignificant.
      - notahacker 6y ago
        Someone should tell all the people who've studied numismatics for their entire life! Even the etymology of the word "money" derives from the location of the mint in Rome.
        bingbong70 6y ago
        Before the fiat system, national currencies could have been considered closer to "money" because they were actually backed by commodities. Now we have pure currency and all fiat currencies go to ~0 in less than 100 years. USD, GBP, CAD = currency Bitcoin, Gold, Silver = money

anigbrowl 6y ago

Those bills cost energy to produce. The bank had to be built. There was a teller there, did they spend any energy driving to the bank that day? Did you use a duffel bag? Where’d that come from? Etc. Just like the mining rigs that produce bitcoin. It seems like you're conflating fixed costs (of plant and machinery) with marginal costs (of exchanging some amount of BTC vs fiat).

PragmaticPulp 6y ago

> Those bills cost energy to produce. The bank had to be built. There was a teller there, did they spend any energy driving to the bank that day? Did you use a duffel bag? It's 2021. Carrying around duffel bags of paper bills received from a human bank teller is not how anyone manages their cash or transactions. Bitcoin is not the only way to digitally transact. It's not even a good way. In practice, it's just about the worst way to handle transactions unless you have no other options.